The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General recently released a report showing that despite categorizing the opioid crisis as a public health emergency, Ohio doctors are still overprescribing opioids.

In looking at opioid prescriptions for Medicaid participants in Ohio between June of 2016 and May of 2017, nearly one in six beneficiaries in Ohio received at least one opioid through Medicaid. Sixteen percent of beneficiaries — 539,810 of the nearly 3.5 million enrolled in Ohio Medicaid — received opioids.

The inspector general also found that nearly 5,000 Medicaid recipients received high doses of opioids during that period and more than 40,000 children under the age of 18 received prescriptions. Approximately 6,000 of those children received two or more opioid prescriptions, but only 385 of those children were receiving hospice care.